When I would try
and feel ashamed of myself for being poor and helpless, I only
experience a glow of pride at the other and more pleasing events of my
career; when I think of the few whom I failed to pay in full (and so
far from blaming me some of them are now my firmest friends), I cannot
help remembering also the many who profess themselves indebted to me.

Let me, in as few words as possible, state the results of my Crimean
campaign. To be sure, I returned from it shaken in health. I came home
wounded, as many others did. Few constitutions, indeed, were the
better for those winters before Sebastopol, and I was too hard worked
not to feel their effects; for a little labour fatigues me now--I
cannot watch by sick-beds as I could--a week's want of rest quite
knocks me up now. Then I returned bankrupt in fortune. Whereas others
in my position may have come back to England rich and prosperous, I
found myself poor--beggared. So few words can tell what I have lost.

But what have I gained? I should need a volume to describe that
fairly; so much is it, and so cheaply purchased by suffering ten times
worse than what I have experienced. I have more than once heard people
say that they would gladly suffer illness to enjoy the delights of
convalescence, and so, by enduring a few days' pain, gain the tender
love of relatives and sympathy of friends. And on this principle I
rejoice in the trials which have borne me such pleasures as those I
now enjoy, for wherever I go I am sure to meet some smiling face;
every step I take in the crowded London streets may bring me in
contact with some friend, forgotten by me, perhaps, but who soon
reminds me of our old life before Sebastopol; it seems very long ago
now, when I was of use to him and he to me.

Where, indeed, do I not find friends. In omnibuses, in river
steamboats, in places of public amusement, in quiet streets and
courts, where taking short cuts I lose my way oft-times, spring up old
familiar faces to remind me of the months spent on Spring Hill. The
sentries at Whitehall relax from the discharge of their important duty
of guarding nothing to give me a smile of recognition; the very
newspaper offices look friendly as I pass them by; busy Printing-house
Yard puts on a cheering smile, and the _Punch_ office in Fleet Street
sometimes laughs outright. Now, would all this have happened if I had
returned to England a rich woman? Surely not.

A few words more ere I bring these egot